


Midnight Callers

by vanitaslaughing



Category: Bravely Default: Flying Fairy
Genre: Airships and crystals and Ringabel and Edea bantering, Alternate Universe, F/M, Post-Game, Spoilers (as expected from the setting alone), more airships and banter than anything else
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1346323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peace and quiet - and two comrades in arms on top of an airship. One's part of the Council of Six, and the other's trying to get there. It doesn't really help that they're rather infamous for constantly getting on each other's nerves... Oh well. Luxendarc's in for a surprise, and that surprise is not a Dark Knight's face or a plot to destroy the world!</p>
<p>((Abandoned work. Sad to say my computer's death was a long progress that slowly corrupted all my data until it finally failed to start completely and I've lost the plot and characterisation checklists for that one long ago.))</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Callers

**Author's Note:**

> (title is based on the airship fleets name. it'll make sense soon)

"The wind's calming down, sir!"

"... So she's _finally_ done it? It took her a while. Not that I blame her, really."

"Are we to set down in Ancheim and..."

"No, don't bother. We were to return home once the winds settled down. We're not the Vestal's guides nor are we her personal piloting service - we're the only intact part of the Eternian Forces as of now, men. Therefore, our new course is northwest back to Eternia, not south to the temple."

"Yes, sir!" The black-clad soldier left.

Blue eyes looked around and over to the sky. Indeed, the formerly almost violently tugging winds died down, settling to something more natural. With a ship as big as Grandship it had been hard to notice how unnaturally the winds usually became after 'awakening' the Wind Crystal, but with a ship build for speed rather than firepower and sheer tank-like behaviour in the skies, the crew and their commander actually had trouble reaching the Flor-Cheim Sea - as he'd remembered halfway through it, this problem had also been prominent in the place he had been from when he was still the Dark Knight.

Sadly the old airship had barely made it back home to Eternia after the loss of their commander, and the one they were now perched on top of was a different airship altogether. Not that the crew and the rest of Eternia knew that the man called Alternis Dim was indeed well - his body unretrievably sunken to the ocean floor beneath the Holy Pillar. If he'd been lucky he died from lack of air while falling these easily 2,000 meters of altitude, or had his body crushed upon impact with the water. That would have been less painful than falling down there only to be unable to swim due to injuries and armour and drown painfully.

Not that they'd ever know.

"...?"

"... What?"

"I said, earth to Commander Dim, man! Just because your official last name is 'Dim' now doesn't mean you have to turn completely dim, y'know?"

He turned around, ready to scold the crew member for being so rude when he was obviously lost in thought. Though, upon turning around he was greeted by a familiar face and a rather wide grin on these features. Framed by almost golden-shimmering blonde hair, the usual pale skin of Eternian-born people as well as these deep-brown eyes, he could only laugh.

" _Technically_ you're not allowed to be this rude to me, Miss Lee. I'm the commanding head of the Midnight Callers division of the Eternian Forces, which you've been assigned to. Not to mention my naturally higher military rank as member of the Council of Six - and no, your father doesn't matter in this argument, Edea dearest. He personally assigned you to my unit."

"... Geez, Ringabel, get off your high horse."

"It's a rather high vessel if you ask me. We're on an _airship_ , Edea."

She groaned a fake groan, then proceeded to punch his arm. There was an obvious question in her eyes - "Why aren't we paying Agnès a visit?" - and he merely shrugged. The Vestal's duty was a different entirely than the one the Eternians had been presented with. They were only observers this time, and all of that after dropping various and obscenely large amounts of money and recovery help in general to the lands affected by what the Grand Marshal had tried to keep from happening. Which was (nicely put) every country in Luxendarc except Eternia itself.

With the Eternian Forces reduced to nothing but the Midnight Callers vaguely intact, the duchy was no threat anymore, not that anyone desired anything like a war anymore. The Swordbearers and the Black Blades crushed, Eisenberg was now finally recovering. Once the Fire Crystal would be calmed down by the last remaining Vestal... Eisenberg was bound to be a peaceful country for a long time from now on. Florem, while still staggering under the aftershocks from the Bloodrose Legion's hands in the corruption, was slowly rising back to its feet as well - a Vestaling was already in position there, ready to learn from the only other Oblige in this Luxendarc. Not that Ringabel actually cared what happened to Florem. Ancheim was well-governed, water finally free and the winds continued to be a boon to the clockwork metropolis. Even from here one could see the Grand Mill turning even as the winds slowed down to their natural pace. As for Caldisla, the country was already almost back to normal state when they'd asked Egil for the orichalcum. Still, there was a striking dent in both polulation and military forces. The largest settlement other than the capital had been swallowed by the Great Chasm anyway, and though Tiz and Egil commandeered the reconstruction now, progress was slow. Mostly because it was such a painful place for everyone who knew about the Great Chasm's true cause.

"It's almost... funny. The only ones who survived were... my father, Lord DeRosso of this world, Sage Yulyana... and Praline, of all people. Everyone else is gone. And through our hands, nonetheless..."

"... Including Alternis Dim."

"But... but you're Alternis Dim, just as much as he was."

Ringabel shook his head. "Not... entirely. We share a name, possibly large amounts of history as well, but we differ... Shared, differed. He was less a coward than I have been, and he's been graced with the pleasure of being spared from the torture that almost killed me off as well as drove me half insane with the desire to hurt someone as he hurt me. Thankfully, my world's Victor S. Court managed to... keep me from plain slaughtering everyone and everything around me by saving my life just in time and making sure I'd not wake up with my strength intact. It sounds cruel, but it saved many lives as well as my sanity. Not that... it really helped me anyway. Going mad with shock only to wake up half dead in a place you don't know is something I don't wish on another Alternis Dim. Not even on someone as vile as Qada, actually."

Silence stretched out between them. Only the wind's gentle whisper and the sound of an engine as the airship turned around could be heard as Edea Lee looked on ahead. It had been less than a month since they returned here, since Ringabel learned his past failures were plain erased with the erasure of his homeworld, but it still ate away at them in the dark. All of them - Tiz had looked rather tired when they visited Caldisla, Agnès herself was not to be seen by common folk like 'Alternis' and Edea anymore. As for the man who now shouted a few commands at people...

She knew nightmares still plagued him, voiceless whispers of a world that had been lost to Ouroboros. The mute blame for death after death after death in a world where Alternis Dim had been doomed to watch everything fall to pieces much faster than any other world. Had been forced to watch his whole world turn into agony and anguish as he fell into the Underflow, both of his treatments and the eventual slaughter of the Wind Vestal's following before his eyes as icy terror rendered his body unable to move. What part made this man choke at night and blubber out a stream of apologies as well with an equal stream of tears... Edea didn't know, didn't want to know. Not yet. Ringabel surely wasn't able to tackle this issue yet - he still had to settle in in this world with his new position as Alternis Dim, left hand of the Grand Marshal of Eternia and part of the Council of Six.

It was odd to see the man she got to know as a rather flunky and easygoing amnesiac as a stern commander of an entire airship fleet with a hundred skilled soldiers waiting for his orders.

It was odd... but not half as odd and terrifying as had awakening the Crystals been.

 

-

 

They watched the black airship turn around. In the blue skies of Luxendarc this airship was quite visible even from a distance as great as approximately the Ancheim port and the Temple of Wind was.

"We make for the Water Crystal," she'd said, but actually Agnès Oblige wished she was on top of that airship for a moment. No temple, no duty. Just her and her ragtag bunch of misfits and colliding personalities, on a quest to save Luxendarc from total obliteration without knowing they were leading it towards total obliteration. Rebuilding the temple would take time, and she and her acolytes were the only ones remaining, not counting the few in Florem. There was no Vestal of Earth anymore, and both the Vestal of Fire and her Vestaling had perished - and so had their acolytes with them. Only a single girl fit to be a Vestaling, found in the Florem slums well after Olivia had died, was currently waiting to be permitted to take up this duty back in Florem.

It was odd to know both the future Vestal of Water and the last remaining commander of one part of the Eternian Forces (though not in a literal way) were raised in the same place. A boy raised on Anticrystalist belief and a girl who would become one of the central people of Crystalism. To be honest it was as weird as the Vestal of Wind joining together with an Eternian Sky Knight, a sole survivor of a settlement of shepherds and a man with no past except for a book that foretold the future sounded. And that was what had brought many a Luxendarc to chaos and destruction, even wiped a few of these worlds in parallel from existence. Though, as Agnès realised soon after returning home, most of them probably lacked 'Ringabel'. Not all of them, but a large quantity of them.

Only these four - Vestal, Miracle, Anticrystalist and Amnesiac - had been able to defeat Airy. Not once, not twice, but three times in rapid succession.

...

She still wished she'd asked Ringabel - Alternis - to teach her how to pilot an airship and asked for a small one from the duchy.

 

-

 

She'd thanked him and left. Together with this other creature. Tiz had expected to drop dead upon this.

He hadn't.

He merely passed out for a week (again) which had worried the inkeep more than the old man let on. He was just getting used to being in the same position as Owen had been - maybe that was why the inkeep had worried so much.

The Celestial and Airy's sister... they were gone. Back to the Celestial Realm or wherever the fairy had come from? Most likely. Tiz tried not to think about this too much. In the end, whenever he overthought it, he came to the conclusion he shouldn't be alive. Whether he died from exhaustion or by falling and drowning in the river that Alternis fished him from, it was highly unlikely he would have survived without Airy's sister speaking to his subconsciousness and the Celestial eventually taking a hold of him. An animated corpse - maybe he'd be torched by a Holy spell one day. But, to be honest, Tiz decided he was going to enjoy living until the Celestials realised that there was an undead feigning being a living human. Until that day, he'd sworn, he would be as good a knight to Caldisla as he had been a companion to Agnès.

...

Though, he admitted that with pride and bitterness, he quite missed being at the Vestal's side. There was no denying his feelings, but there was also no denying her duty and the fact that there was barely any space for men in Crystalism. Caldisla was a country without belief due to a lack of crystal anyway. His colourless eyes compared to the bright colours his friends had told as much. Caldisla, always a small island compared to the other countries in Luxendarc, with grey eyes and various amount of skill in things that the other countries deemed worthless.

It was his home, perfect as it was. With its small trading airships that could not scale Eternia's craggy peaks, with its bursting port and colourless eyes as they cheerfully started each day as if it was their last. For Tiz, this might as well be true.

**Author's Note:**

> There's not much to say about this chapter tbh, it's just a small prologie. Stuff will be expanded upon later on. As in the oneshot I posted on here before, the eye thing applies here as well. I also kind of ditched the sequel hook because. No. I can't write semi-happy post-game aus when one of the main characters is a fucking sleeping vegetable. Like, what the heck Square that was one hella downer ending for someone as ridiculously attached to the characters as me (me being a total masochist and playing the entire game for the 8th time as we speak)


End file.
